Strategic Sourcing Category Manager - Concerts, Venues and Festivals Procurement

Job Description

Who are we?

Who are you?

Passionate and motivated. Driven, with an entrepreneurial spirit. Resourceful, innovative, forward thinking and committed. At Live Nation Entertainment, our people embrace these qualities, so if this sounds like you then please read on!

The Role:

The Strategic Sourcing Category Manager for Concerts, Venues and Festivals Procurement is responsible for holistic and strategic management of Live Nation's sizeable annual spend with Entertainment Equipment and Service suppliers and distributors. The Category Manager is responsible for managing the sourcing- and procurement-related activities in a non-mandated environment with decentralized stakeholders, with the intent to realize material, sustainable value for Live Nation. In addition to generating quantitative and qualitative benefits via cost reduction, cost avoidance, demand management, and other value drivers, this individual is also responsible for strategic supplier management and relationship management with Global Procurement's diverse group of key stakeholders.

Responsibilities:
• Lead sourcing, negotiating and contracting efforts for millions of dollars in annual spend across a wide variety of categories for senior stakeholders on Live Nation's Concerts, Venues and Festivals teams.
• Working in a highly collaborative manner with a decentralized group of stakeholders and Sponsorship team members, devise and execute category and negotiation strategies that optimize the use of spend aggregation and other procurement levers to generate material, sustainable value regionally, nationally, or globally, as applicable.
• Encourage the use of competitive sourcing, including RFPs, procurement markets, simultaneous proofs of concept, concurrent direct negotiations, reverse auctions, and similar approaches.
• Analyze business, financial, and legal risks and develop and communicate creative solutions and mitigation strategies for key negotiation points; conduct rigorous analysis of spend data and other quantitative metrics to enable stakeholders to make sound, data-driven decisions.
• Partner with senior stakeholders to operationalize agreements to facilitate rollout across the enterprise.
• Lead supplier qualification efforts and partner with stakeholders in establishing quality processes with suppliers; serve as an escalation point when addressing supplier quality or other performance issues; respond to systemic supplier service and/or quality issues to mitigate negative impact on Live Nation; in collaboration with stakeholders, support root cause analysis and implementation of corrective actions.
• Partner with stakeholders and suppliers to demonstrate and maintain ongoing market competitiveness of existing relationships; harness supplier expertise to drive supplier innovation, productivity, and performance; conduct due diligence on product trends that provide solutions to meet changing business requirements; track product lifecycles in high-spend and high-risk areas to assist in multi-year budget planning and product forecasting.
• Interface with members of legal, sponsorship, financial/revenue recognition, operations, sales, and other stakeholder teams to bring deals to closure and ensure compliance with audit, financial, and system requirements; assist in resolving post-execution nonstandard contract modification requests/disputes.

Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree required; MBA preferred: Associate's degree may be considered with significant work experience.
• Typically, 8-10 years of experience in Supply Chain management, Strategic Procurement, Finance, Analytics or Operations Transformation.
• Ability to work self-directed in a fast paced, matrixed environment, with responsibility for managing a portfolio of high-profile procurement projects; self-motivated, proactive, independent, and responsive, requiring little supervisory attention.
• Collaborative style, with innate customer service mindset and natural relationship-building skills; excellent 360° management of internal and external team members and other stakeholders; proven ability to manage and motivate diverse groups of stakeholders and project team members.
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills, with demonstrated ability to influence and build consensus across a wide variety of audiences, ranging from senior executives to front-line workers; must be fluent in English.
• Solid analytical skills, with demonstrated ability to analyze, evaluate, distill, and present financial and other quantitative data in a meaningful way to build buy-in for data-based decisions across a broad cross-section of stakeholders.
• Proven track record in co-developing, with stakeholders and other team members, innovative solutions and associated negotiation strategies that deliver meaningful incremental value over the status quo.
• Proven ability to partner with suppliers in forward-thinking strategic development and relationship building, with demonstrated success in leveraging supplier capabilities to generate incremental value, increased operating efficiency, and/or improved risk mitigation.
• Track record of successfully executing full-lifecycle sourcing projects – from identification, planning, and analysis through sourcing, negotiating, and contracting – in an extended enterprise environment.
• Experience sourcing a wide array of indirect spend categories preferred, particularly FF&E, Facilities, and Construction, with experience in entertainment-related goods and services particularly valued.
• Advanced negotiation skills, with experience leveraging an interest-based approach to develop and execute compelling, comprehensive negotiation strategies and build strategic alignment among multiple parties.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite required; experience with Business Objects, Smartsheets, SharePoint and similar analytical and collaborative tools preferred; experience with one or more major P2P platforms preferred, but not required.

If the above description sounds like you and fits your background, apply online at www.livenationentertainment.com/careers to join the Live Nation Entertainment team today!

Applicants for employment in the US must possess work authorization which does not require sponsorship by the employer for a visa.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rzknq3-3-129-45-92-42 in your application.